


Doesn't ring a bell

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Deal with a Devil, Episode Related, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Heartache, Heartbreak, Hurt Alec Lightwood, Memory Alteration, Parabatai Bond, Past Relationship(s), Protective Jace Wayland, Supportive Jace Wayland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 20:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Alec finally comes clean to Jace about the breakup with Magnus and it after they have a conversation about love and loss and life, Jace shows up to Magnus's new place to explain to him Alec's reasons for breaking up with him, only to realize that Magnus isn't the same man he was a week ago, and not just in relation to the his recent heartbreak. In fact, he's acting as if he hasn't had his heart broken in centuries.





	Doesn't ring a bell

**Author's Note:**

> I know this isn't how it really went but I wrote it based on the promo where Magus is asking Jem to remove his memories and the couple of clips where Alec talks to Jace and Izzy about it. I was proud of it, so let me know what you think x

Jace flew down the corridors of the Institute, the place he had called his home for most of his life, his heart-beat pounding urgently in his ears in such a way that he was sure it would stop from stress, and threw open the door to Alec’s office like he had done it a million times before. Alec jumped when the door hit the back wall and Jace entered, wild-haired and wide-eyed, and panic started to seep into his exhausted features. He wasn’t even able to ask what was wrong before Jace was already speaking. “What did you do?”

Startled, Alec slowly sunk back down into his chair, hands gripping onto the desk like a tether to keep him still. “What?”

Slamming the door shut behind him, Jace stormed towards Alec’s desk and placed his shaking hands on the tabletop. “What did you do with Magnus?” The way that Alec’s face shone with horror and then smoothed over to nothingness made something go cold in Alec’s chest. “Alec, by the Angel, please don’t tell me you did what I think you did.”

Alec pillowed his head on his hands and tapped his fingers on the wood, his blunt nails scrapping at the tabletop. “It’s none of your business,” Alec’s voice was clipped but he was trying to sound bored. Jace grit his teeth.

“Damn right it’s my business!” Jace shouted. “I’ve noticed you acting strange all week and now Izzy tells me that you _broke up with Magnus?”_ It was true- Jace still recalled the way Isabelle had pulled him into her bedroom, shaking and sobbing and holding her arms around herself like she was afraid that she would tremble herself apart. Jace too, felt like his stomach had dropped down to his toes and after holding his sister until her shaking and sobbing had subsided, he had run straight to Alec’s office.

The way Alec gnashed his teeth together told Jace that he wasn’t as emotionless about the situation as he claimed to be. “I did,” He grit out. Jace felt like he needed to sit down, maybe collapse onto a bed but the floor would do. “Why?”

“ _Why_?” Jace demanded. “Are you insane! You loved him and don’t give me that crap about him not loving you because we all know how much he did! You were going to _propose_ to him, Alec! I thought you guys were fine- great really if it meant you felt like you were at a place where you believed you could propose!” The words flew out of Jace in a rush, with so much force and so much velocity that there was no way he could stop them, even when he watched Alec’s hands grip tightly onto the edge of his desk. “What happened? What did I miss? I’m your _parabatai_ , you should know that you can talk to me about anything!”

“Don’t, Jace,” Alec said softly despite everything in him screaming the opposite. His shoulders were tight and his breathing was short and his fingers were gripping the table so tight that his knuckles shone starkly against his pale skin. There were so many emotions that Jace could feel flowing freely through their bond that Jace couldn’t even begin to decipher them.

Scoffing, Jace threaded his fingers in his hair and pulled tightly at the strands. “I can _feel_ you, Alec. You’ve been miserable all week and you haven’t said a word to any of us about it. Hell, you’ve been brooding more than usual lately and I just thought you needed space because you’ve got a lot on your shoulders, not because you were throwing your life away.”

“I don’t brood.” Alec murmured.

Ignoring him, Jace continued to pace the room back and forth, maneuvering around the small table and chairs set and spanning the length of the too-small office space. As Jace spoke, he could feel Alec getting more and more agitated, but he didn’t stop. “I _knew_ something was wrong when you never told me how the proposal went. I knew I should have asked you but I thought you would come to me when you were ready, I just never expected anything like _this_! I thought you were more sensible Alec. Surely there was nothing that could have happened that would have made you give up your dream of being happy!”

The final words hadn’t even left Jace’s mouth when Alec was standing up and slamming his hands on his desk and roaring with every pain and sorrow and heartache that he had ever experienced and he threw all the papers off of the desk, the ink pot smashing against the wall, “ _I made a deal with his father!_ ”

All the heat left Jace at once and he stood there, swaying slightly, and suddenly so cold he could hardly breathe. “What?” he uttered, voice shaking. “Y-you made a deal with a demon? You, Alec? Why would you…?”

“So Magnus could be happy again,” Alec sounded like his soul had been sucked from his very body and Jace worried that it might have been if Alec’s claim of making a deal with a demon was true.

“You think that losing you is going to make him happy?” Jace was in total disbelief- how could Alec possibly think such a thing. “You think having his heart broken is going to fix him? What was the deal?”

Shaking, Alec placed his hands back down on the table to balance himself. “He was… he was so upset, so unhappy about losing his magic. I thought he was fine, that he was getting better with coping with it, but I was wrong. The night I was going to propose, I had everything set out perfectly, and then he came home drunk and told me how miserable he was without his magic and I… I couldn’t…”

Slowly, Jace approached the desk where Alec was hunched over it, shaking, and placed his hands over Alec’s. “Alec, my _parabatai_ , my brother, tell me what deal you made. Nobody can help you if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

Taking a deep breath, Alec bowed his head until it dropped below his shoulders and his dark hair covered his face. “Magnus gets his magic back after I break up with him. He got to be happy again, but only after I broke his heart.”

Jace felt like the floor was falling out from under his feet and that he was plummeting down to the dreaded heat of the abyss. “You just broke up with him? Just like that? Alec, that’s not the kind of thing that’s easily forgettable-”

“I’m not his first boyfriend and I won’t be his last,” Alec’s voice was clipped. “He’ll move on like he did every other time and he will be better for it.”

“And what about you?” Jace asked and Alec flinched. “You’ve only got one life to live with a limited amount of time. You won’t forget about this. Why can’t _you_ be happy?”

Alec gulped and looked away from Jace. “I don’t matter. My happiness doesn’t matter. Magnus is the one who will live a thousand lives and one day he’ll forget all about me. It’s the best thing that could have happened.”

“Why are such a selfless bastard?” Jace hissed in sympathy. “This can’t have been the only way. If you had just told us what you needed to do, we could have helped you!”

“I am so sick of breaking everything I touch,” Alec waved his hands in the air as he spoke. “I don’t want to be the stern one who gives orders and sets expectations. I’m so tired of ruining everything that I’ve ever enjoyed and I wasn’t about to let it happen with Magnus.”

Jace felt his heart fluttering like a million tiny butterflies all dying from lack of light. “Alec…” He breathed and suddenly all the things he’d been feeling through their bond made much more sense.

Defeated, Alec crouched down so his elbows were on the desk and his face was in his hands. The sight made something broken within Jace fracture even more. “I have never loved anyone the way I have loved Magnus,” Alec’s voice wavered and with was thick with so much emotion that Jace thought he could drown in it. “And I have never been loved like that before. And it hurts like hell knowing that I’ll never get to tell him I love him again, but I couldn’t let him stay broken. I couldn’t… I couldn’t let him continue to hurt because of something he did for me. I couldn’t do it. I’ll kill myself over and over again every day just to make him happy.”

Slowly, Jace approached the desk and placed a hand on Alec’s back. He was shaking. “You should have told us.” He whispered. “Even if you weren’t going to tell us before you did it, you could have told us afterwards. We could have helped you through it.”

“It was my burden to bear. My pain to endure.” Alec said. “I didn’t want to drag you guys into any of it.” He dropped his head past his hands and tugged at his hair. “He begged me to stay. He begged me not to go and I- I've never heard him sound like that, have never had anybody talk to me like that. And I still walked away. And it felt like every step I took I was walking on broken shards of glass.”

“Breakups are hard,” Jace said, gently rubbing his hand up and down Alec’s back as he sunk into the high-backed desk chair. “They hurt and they fester and for a little bit it feels like you’re dying but… you’ll get over it. You’ll survive.”

Alec continued to tremble. “You’ve only had one serious girlfriend that wasn’t an exotic hook-up on a lonely night after a long day of hunting, and that’s Clary. Magnus was my first _everything_. You’ve never considered proposing to any of those women but I… I had the ring and everything. I don’t know if I’ll ever move on from this. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget.”

Sighing, Jace dropped his head so it rested on Alec’s, bright blond hair mixing with dark onyx, and whispered in his ear. “Maybe not, but you’ll grow stronger. You’ll move on and you’ll be happy again one day. And we’re going to be here with you through it all, Izzy and I, because you’re our big brother and we’ll never let anyone hurt you. You spend so much time protecting us and making sure we don’t get hurt, why don’t you let us take care of you for once?”

Jace was proud of the startled chuckle he managed to get from Alec, thick with tears and snot and pain, but it was still a laugh. “It’s a deal,” he joked before the mood turned solemn. “I did it to help him. I did it so he could live the life he deserved and so he could feel worthy again. I did it because I love him.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

“And someday soon,” Jace said, gently running his hands through Alec’s hair. “He’ll understand that and forgive you. You just have to work on forgiving yourself now.”

The first sob finally wretched itself from somewhere deep within Alec’s stone-like exterior. “I really hope that’s true.”

A week later, Jace found himself climbing the stairs to the apartment Alec used to share with Magnus, wondering what the hell he was doing there. As he reached the landing he strode to the door and realized he didn’t really have a plan, but he took a deep breath and rapped a few times on the door before he walked in without waiting for a reply. Magnus knew him, he usually didn’t mind if Jace invited himself in. Maybe that would change with him being in the midst of a breakup though. “Magnus, we need to talk.”

Hearing a knock, the door opening and his name all in quick succession, Magnus rounded a corner into the room, dusting off his expensive tailored purple suit that sparkled under the light. “Jace? What’s wrong? Has something happened to Clarissa?”

Jace blinked, confused. “No, Clary’s fine. I’m not here to talk about her.” He caught sight of the black garbage bag in the corner, filled with all of the clothes Alec had left there after the breakup. That just made Jace angry but he tried to bite it back

“Oh, well that’s a first,” Magnus looked in the mirror hanging on the wall and fixed the stray strands of hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Do close the door, there’s an awful draft in this apartment and I don’t particularly want the whole apartment complex hearing my business. Would you like a drink?” He waved his hand and a bottle of beer appeared between his fingers with a flash of golden sparks.

The sight sent a stabbing pain through Jace, knowing what Alec had given up to give Magnus back that magic, and he showed no signs about missing Alec at all. He didn’t seem as upset as Alec had said he was. “No, no drinks. We really need to talk.”

Magnus shrugged and waved his hand and the beer disappeared from his grasp. “Suit yourself. What do you have to tell me that’s so important you couldn’t even wait until we’ve both had a drink?”

“It’s about Alec,” Jace said in a rush, words tumbling out in his desperation to say them. There was a faint look of confusion on Magnus’s face. “He loves you, he really does, and he didn’t break up with you for his own benefit, it was just that he’d made a deal with your father to get your magic back and that was his price and-”

Jace’s words trailed into silence when Magnus held up a hand to stop them. The next thing he said was something Jace hadn’t known he was dreading until this moment and all the blood rushed from his face into his toes as Magnus uttered the worst thing he could have possibly said. “Alec? I’m afraid I don’t know an Alec. The name doesn’t ring a bell, and I’m sure it would if I had dated them recently. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”


End file.
